government is an insurance company with an army. when we talk about the insurance company part, we are talking about medicare and social security, and to some degree medicaid. those are programs that benefit the middle class and the poor, mainly through retirement. the other thing that people talk about, those are very small parts in the federal budget compared to medicare and social security. really, is not a question of needing to cut these programs. it is that they are growing more quickly than the economy, larger than they have been in the past, and what we need to decide as a nation is, are willing to pay substantially higher taxes than we have in the past to pay for these programs? if we want to keep our current tax burdens, we need to figure out how to reduce those programs. medicare -- we are not talking about reducing benefits over the long term. we have a health care system over all that grows more quickly than the economy. economists do not have one reason why that happens. they are looking for all the reasons why that ha